Outcome of Fight Back Challenge

Well, sadly I lost my battle of the Nebraska taxes. I went to the on base tax center and they took a look at what happened. Somehow Turbo Tax calculated my taxes for Nebraska as if I was not a resident of Nebraska at all. So much to my dismay, I won't be due another 2,000 dollars like I wanted!

But I did not take this loss in stride....I vowed to figure out a way to fight someone! Instead of the Nebraska taxes, we are taking on our home phone. We hardly use the darned thing, but I really insist upon having one since I don't always keep my cell phone on me. Plus for emergency purposes I like to know where I can get to a phone that will get me to someone immediately. With a cell phone I never know where it is.

Right now we have Vonage, which I am very happy with. But my mom has something called a Magic Jack, that is 40 dollars for two years! We almost pay that much for one month of Vonage! I am sending Joe tomorrow to get the Magic Jack.

In addition we are considering switching from our local cable company, to satellite. I think it will be cheaper, I am just concerned about installation fees and such. We need to sit down and figure all that out and if it would indeed be cheaper.

One money saving thing I did this week was make Homeade Yogurt. It turned out okay, just a little runnier than I had hoped. I will experiment and get it just right! There are several reasons I wanted to make my own yogurt. First my version will have much less sugar in it than the store bought. Plus it is much much cheaper! And there are no plastic cups to end up in the landfills since I put them in reusable containers.

I will keep you all updated on my Fight Back!

Update on Garden

Jordan loves to water!

The garden has been so much fun for Jordan and I. I love to go out after work and water with him. He has so much fun blasting each plant with water. I keep expecting the plants to
shoot out of the ground from the water pressure!

These are my first radishes! They were yummy :)

Here is some lettuce! Coming up nicely!

Here we go again....

High of the sense of accomplishment that installing the ceiling fan incited in me, I dashed back to Lowe's and bought a new stainless steel sink and faucet for the kitchen. Joe was hesitant about his ability to install such a flashy new item, so I made him watch a video on Youtube, which made the job look ridiculously simple. He agreed it wouldn't be so bad...plus Lowe's charges 450 dollars for installation of a sink and faucet...

Our sink wasn't in bad shape, it was just so shallow that one plate made it look filled to the brim. That combined with the fact that the faucet was so low, made washing anything incredibly annoying. So for the new sink I picked one that was super deep...but this created problems.

Today while on my way home from work, I called Joe to tell him to get ready to install the sink...I was on my way and we would tackle the project. Turns out he was already working. He had called my mom over to watch Jordan while he worked. Well he tried to do it without someone watching Jordan, but realized when Jordan kept stealing tools and pipes and running away laughing something had to be done.

Joe ran into many problems along the way, but fortunately after several trips to Lowe's, he got them worked out. Because the new sink was so much deeper we had to cut pipes, reroute them, and it wasn't easy. Finally around 11pm we were finished. We stood back to admire our work...then saw that damn leak!!

I went upstairs and went straight to bed. I was too tired and too frustrated to deal with all that! Joe pushed on and fixed the damn thing. Thank god for his persistance- I would have called a plumber!

Joe says this is by far the worst thing I have ever made him do...he isn't jumping up and down to do anymore home improvement projects. I may have to give him a rest for a while...

We did it!

The ceiling fan was a success! After about 4 hours we finally got it all on the wall- sure it was supposed to take less than an hour according to the box....but we were beginners!

Now I feel like we can tackle the world. I am thinking about replacing our kitchen sink. The one the house came with is about 2 inches deep! Well not that bad, but just about!

Crazy....

Life is so crazy since I have been home. We are busy all the time! The house still isn't completely unpacked. We have projects going everywhere; painting, installing ceiling fans, planting stuff in the yard, curtains, mini blinds.... I don't think we will ever be finished!

Today we trimmed some trees in the yard. Later I am going to try to take out one of the dead ones in the front yard. We'll see how that goes....

Now that Jordy is down for a nap we are going to put a ceiling fan in our bedroom- neither of us has ever installed one before....hopefully we don't electricute ourselves.